Mother's Day sent me down another mom justice spiral. My five year old insisted on playing "Mother's Day music". It turns out that if you ask Google for it, such a thing exists, and it's a nightmare. So off I went, plumbing the depths of societal inequity and the insidious obligations that are reinforced by Mother's Day.
While I was down there, I came across this article that Jessica Valenti wrote a few years back about how moms' careers are suffering because dads aren't doing their part. It is a great article, and yes, research backs it, moms are doing the lion's share of the parenting and yes, it takes a toll on their careers. But do we think it's because dads are lazy? or they don't want to? or they're just assholes? My personal experience with the dads in my life makes me believe otherwise.
Let's start by recognizing that dads are spending more time parenting now than they were 55 years ago. In a 2016 study, they were found to spend an average of 8 hours a week parenting and 10 hours housekeeping compared to 2.5 and 4 in 1965. Unfortunately, moms are also spending more time parenting. For moms in 2016 it was 14 hours/week compared to the 10 hours/week of 1965. Modern parenting takes more time, but modern dads are more than 3 times as involved as 60s dads. It's just that moms are parenting almost twice that.
So what are the real reasons fathers have a smaller share of the parenting load? I think it comes down to the following:
Dads are under greater societal pressure to bring the bacon.
Dads face more workplace pressure to spend more time on work than family.
Toxic masculinity. It's bullshit.
There's a lack of support structures for dads.
From the top: while moms are feeling all kinds of bullshit pressure to be pretty, keep a good house, and give themselves up to motherhood, dads are feeling pressure to be strong and manly, unemotional, and financially successful. Restrictive gender stereotypes weigh heavily on both sides.
Let's use parental leave as an example. Maternity leave is absolutely essential for pregnant moms. Paternity leave is equally essential for new dads. Here's why:
Not all dads are in heterosexual relationships and can rely on moms to take care of new kiddos (yet another place where we could really step up on equal treatment, yeah?)
If dads in heterosexual relationships don't get paternity leave it is all on moms to take care of new kiddos and from the start dads don't get to play as much of a role in their new child's life. This means the whole family becomes trained to think of the mom as the parent who does all the parenting.
So let's just call it parental leave and support it equally so parents can parent equally and can be represented equally in the workforce.
The Family Medical Leave Act allows all new parents to take up to 12 weeks off, but it's unpaid unless you're at one of those modern, fancy companies (and then it's substantially less time). Dads still face a lot of push back when they ask for it because they're expected to prioritize work over family. And if they take that time, they likely face some of the same consequences moms do.
Workplace standards not only set the precedent for gender-biased parenting, they reinforce it. Did you know that on average a woman's wages take a 7% hit per kid she has? This is because supposedly her priorities are now kid-facing. It's higher for hetero married women, there's an assumption that there's a bacon-bringing dad to support her. But single moms and sole breadwinner moms still take a big hit. Dads on the other hand get an average of over 6% more money when they become a dad. Apparently now they can be expected to work harder, more mouths to feed and all.
Oh, and remember the gender pay gap? Instead of the $.80 to $1(white) women are earning compared to (white) men, for moms and dads, it's $.71 to $1.
This all means that, say if there's a pandemic and childcare disappears, in the average heterosexual relationship the one whose career is more dispensable is the mom's.
Now, before you put you patriarchy punching gloves on, these numbers not only speak to the devaluation of moms, they speak to the pressure on dads to be the sole earners. They are constantly pressured not to be the involved fathers they may want to be.
As for support systems, there's a role model problem. Todays dads had dads that were even less involved than they were. They're in new territory, how do you try to be an involved dad while still contending with toxic masculinity?
Let's consider what happens when dads do try to do more. They get so much shit for doing it "wrong". Like this poor internet famous dad whose attempt to dress his baby for daycare spiraled into meme doom. He didn't know that the baby overalls were supposed to have a shirt under it. Which is hilarious. Because he's somehow also supposed to understand girl style all of a sudden and he didn't, so you know, hilarious. The posts that followed included dads who dressed their kids in backwards shirts, mismatched patterns, extra-bundled their babies for walks or just styled differently than mom would have done it. As though these things are worthy of our derision. Similar memes abound with captions like "I left him with dad for one hour and this is what happened."
I've heard it called "lighthearted teasing." It's not. It's dad shaming and it's born of spite.
And I get it, it's easy to feel bitter about dads getting praised for changing a diaper, getting the kids dressed or making breakfast while we get heavy mom guilt for using disposable diapers, dressing the kids inappropriately for the weather, and not feeding them organic vegetables and lean protein. Think of this praise as a counter force to encourage dads to take on more of the parenting load against the pressures to be an uninvolved dad.
Because when we bitch about worthless dads, when we make jokes about their parenting ineptitude and make fun of their baby styling, we're reinforcing the very stereotypes that are repressing us. We're telling dads they don't belong in the realm of parenting, that they suck at it, and we're making things worse for ourselves.
So stop it.
Instead, lets consider the freedom that dads can have that allows them to parent more creatively. Instead of giving them shit for tying a balloon to their baby's toe as entertainment, maybe we can realize that maybe that's all a baby needs to be entertained and stop dumping our time forcing our kids into one on one play with a plant-based, science-backed Montessori toy. Maybe dessert for breakfast is fine every once in a while. Maybe we could use a little creative freedom when dressing them. Maybe we can stop making parenting harder than it has to be.
Oh, and maybe we can try to give dads the support they need to be the parents they want to be. It's better for moms too.
Happy Father's Day.
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